"Well, go, in any event," said Ormskirk. "Oh, go anywhere, man!--to the devil, for instance."

His eyes, followed the retreating lackey. "As I suspect in the end you will," Ormskirk said, inconsequently. "Still, you are a very serviceable fellow, my good Damiens. I have need of you."

And with a shrug he now began, "Your Highness,--"

"Praise G.o.d, no!" observed the other, fervently.

And Ormskirk nodded his comprehension. "Monsieur de Soyecourt, then. Of course, we heard of your disappearance, I have been expecting something of the sort for years. And,--frankly, politics are often a nuisance, as both Gaston and myself will willingly attest,--especially," he added, with a grimace, "since war between France and England became inevitable through the late happenings in India and Nova Scotia, and both our wives flatly declined to let either of us take part therein,--for fear we might catch our death of cold by sleeping in those draughty tents. Faith, you have descended, sir, like an agreeable meteor, upon two of the most scandalously henpecked husbands in all the universe. In fact, you will not find a gentleman at Ingilby--save Mr. Erwyn, perhaps--but is an abject slave to his wife, and in consequence most abjectly content."

"You have guests, then?" said de Soyecourt. "_Ma foi_, it is unfortunate. I but desired to confer with Gaston concerning the disposal of Beaujolais and my other properties in France since I find that the sensation of hunger, while undoubtedly novel, is, when too long continued, apt to grow tiresome.

I would not willingly intrude, however--"

"Were it not for the fact that you are wealthy, and yet, so long as you preserve your incognito, and remain legally dead, you cannot touch a penny of your fortune! The situation is droll. We must arrange it. Meanwhile you are my guest, and I can a.s.sure you that at Ingilby you will be to all Monsieur de Soyecourt, no more and no less. Now let us see what can be done about clothing Monsieur de Soyecourt for dinner--"

"But I could not consider--" Monsieur de Soyecourt protested.

"I must venture to remind you," the Duke retorted, "that dinner is almost ready, and that Claire is the sort of housewife who would more readily condone fratricide or arson than cold soup."

"It is odd," little de Soyecourt said, with complete irrelevance, "that in the end I should get aid of you and of Gaston. And it is odd you should be forgiving my bungling attempts at crime, so lightly--"

Ormskirk considered, a new gravity in his plump face. "Faith, but we find it more salutary, in looking back, to consider some peccadilloes of our own. And we bear no malice, Gaston and I,--largely, I suppose, because contentment is a great encourager of all the virtues. Then, too, we remember that to each of us, at the eleventh hour, and through no merit of his own, was given the one thing worth while in life. We did not merit it; few of us merit anything, for few of us are at bottom either very good or very bad. Nay, my friend, for the most part we are blessed or d.a.m.ned as Fate elects, and hence her favorites may not in reason contemn her victims.

For myself, I observe the king upon his throne and the thief upon his coffin, in pa.s.sage for the gallows; and I pilfer my phrase and I apply it to either spectacle: _There, but for the will of G.o.d, sits John Bulmer_. I may not understand, I may not question; I can but accept. Now, then, let us prepare for dinner" he ended, in quite another tone.

De Soyecourt yielded. He was shown to his rooms, and Ormskirk rang for Damiens, whom the Duke was sending into France to attend to a rather important a.s.sa.s.sination.

II

At dinner Louis de Soyecourt made divers observations.

First Gaston had embraced him. "And the de Gatinais estates?--but beyond question, my dear Louis! Next week we return to France, and the affair is easily arranged. You may abdicate in due form, you need no longer skulk about Europe disguised as a piano-tuner; it is all one to France, you conceive, whether you or your son reign in Noumaria. You should have come to me sooner. As for your having been in love with my wife, I could not well quarrel with that, since the action would seriously reflect upon my own taste, who am still most hideously in love with her."

Helene had stoutened. Monsieur de Soyecourt noted also that Helene's gold hair was silvering now, as though Time had tangled cobwebs through it, and that Gaston was profoundly unconscious of the fact. In Gaston's eyes she was at the most seventeen. Well, Helene had always been admirable in her management of all, and it would be diverting to see that youngest child of hers.... Meanwhile it was diverting also to observe how conscientiously she was exerting a good influence over Gaston: and de Soyecourt smiled to find that she shook her head at Gaston's third gla.s.s, and that de Puysange did not venture on a fourth. Victoria, to do her justice, had never meddled with any of her husband's vices....

As for the d.u.c.h.ess of Ormskirk, Louis de Soyecourt had known from the beginning--in comparative youthfulness,--that Claire would placidly order her portion of the world as she considered expedient, and that Ormskirk would travesty her, and somewhat bewilder her, and that in the ultimate Ormskirk would obey her to the letter.

Captain Audaine Monsieur de Soyecourt considered at the start diverting, and in the end a pompous bore. Yet they a.s.sured him that Audaine was getting on prodigiously in the House of Commons, [Footnote: The Captain's personal quarrel with the Chevalier St. George and its remarkable upshot, at Antwerp, as well as the Captain's subsequent renunciation of Jacobitism, are best treated of in Garendon's own memoirs.]--as, _ma foi_! he would most naturally do, since his _metier_ was simply to shout well-rounded common-places,--and the circ.u.mstance that he shouted would always attract attention, while the fact that he shouted plat.i.tudes would invariably prevent his giving offence. Lord Humphrey Degge was found a ruddy and comely person, of no especial importance, but de Soyecourt avidly took note of Mr. Erwyn's waistcoat. Why, this man was a genius! Monsieur de Soyecourt at first glance decided. Staid, demure even, yet with a quiet prodigality of color and ornament, an inevitableness of cut--Oh, beyond doubt, this man was a genius!

As for the ladies at Ingilby, they were adjudged to be handsome women, one and all, but quite unattractive, since they evinced not any excessive interest in Monsieur de Soyecourt. Here was no sniff of future conquest, not one side-long glance, but merely three wives unblushingly addicted to their own husbands. _Eh bien_! these were droll customs!

Yet in the little man woke a vague suspicion, as he sat among these contented folk, that, after all, they had perhaps attained to something very precious of which his own life had been void, to a something of which he could not even form a conception. Love, of course, he understood, with thoroughness; no man alive had loved more ardently and variously than Louis de Soyecourt. But what the devil! love was a temporary delusion, an ingenious device of Nature's to bring about perpetuation of the species.

It was a pleasurable insanity which induced you to take part in a rather preposterously silly and undignified action: and once this action was performed, the insanity, of course, gave way to mutual tolerance, or to dislike, or, more preferably, as de Soyecourt considered, to a courteous oblivion of the past.

And yet when this Audaine, to cite one instance only, had vented some particularly egregious speech that exquisite wife of his would merely smile, in a fond, half-musing way. She had twice her husband's wit, and was cognizant of the fact, beyond doubt; to any list of his faults and weaknesses you could have compiled she indubitably might have added a dozen items, familiar to herself alone: and with all this, it was clamant that she preferred Audaine to any possible compendium of the manly virtues. Why, in comparison, she would have pished at a seraph!--after five years of his twaddle, mark you. And Helene seemed to be really not much more sensible about Gaston....

It all was quite inexplicable. Yet Louis de Soyecourt could see that not one of these folk was blind to his or her yoke-fellow's frailty, but that, beside this something very precious to which they had attained, and he had never attained, a man's foible, or a woman's defect, dwindled into insignificance. Here, then, were people who, after five years'

consortment,--consciously defiant of time's corrosion, of the guttering-out of desire, of the gross and daily disillusions of a life in common, and even of the daily fret of all trivialities shared and diversely viewed,--who could yet smile and say: "No, my companion is not quite the perfect being I had imagined. What does it matter? I am content. I would have nothing changed."

Well, but Victoria had not been like that. She let you go to the devil in your own way, without meddling, but she irritated you all the while by holding herself to a mark. She had too many lofty Ideas about her own duties and principles,--much such uncompromising fancies as had led his father to get rid of that little Nelchen.... No, there was no putting up with these rigid virtues, day in and day out. These high-flown notions about right and wrong upset your living, they fretted your luckless a.s.sociates.... These people here at Ingilby, by example, made no pretensions to immaculacy; instead, they kept their gallant compromise with imperfection; and they seemed happy enough.... There might be a moral somewhere: but he could not find it.

CURTAIN

THE EPILOGUE

SPOKEN BY ORMSKIRK, WHO ENTERS IN A FRET

A thankless task! to come to you and mar Your dwindling appet.i.te for caviar, And so I told him!

[_He calls within._ Sir, the critics sneer, And swear the thing is "crude and insincere"!

"Too trivial"! or for an instant pause And doubly d.a.m.n with negligent applause!

Impute, in fine, the prowess of the Vicar Less to repentance than to too much liquor!

Find Louis naught! de Gatinais inane!

Gaston unvital, and George Erwyn vain, And Degge the futile fellow of Audaine!

Nay, sir, no Epilogue avails to save-- You're d.a.m.ned, and Bulmer's hooted as a knave.

[_He retires behind the curtain and is thrust out again. He resolves to make the best of it._

The author's obdurate, and bids me say That--since the doings of our far-off day Smacked less of Hippocrene than of Bohea-- His tiny pictures of that tiny time Aim little at the lofty and sublime, And paint no peccadillo as a crime-- Since when illegally light midges mate, Or flies purloin, or gnats a.s.sa.s.sinate, No sane man hales them to the magistrate.

Or so he says. He merely strove to find And fix a faithful likeness of mankind About its daily business,--to secure No full-length portrait, but a miniature,-- And for it all no moral can procure.

Let Bulmer, then, defend his old-world crew, And beg indulgence--nay, applause--of you.

Grant that we tippled and were indiscreet, And that our idols all had earthen feet; Grant that we made of life a masquerade; And swore a deal more loudly than we prayed; Grant none of us the man his Maker meant,-- Our deeds, the parodies of our intent, In neither good nor ill pre-eminent; Grant none of us a Nero,--none a martyr,-- All merely so-so.

And _de te narratur_.

EXPLICIT